An “Intranet” is a private network that uses protocols and standards similar t o the public Internet, but instead is used only by authorized users. These Intranet networks utilize protocols such as the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol TCP/IP, the User Datagram Protocol/Internet Protocol UDP/IP, Real-time Transfer Protocol RTP, or multicasting to establish the communication between computers. This communication link may be established by means such as an Internet browser, an HTTP server, an FTP server or the like.
With the popularity of Intranet networks increasing, service providers such as cellular operators, satellite communication operators, Internet Service Provider (ISP) and application service providers are using more than one server in a “server farm site” to accommodate the heavy load of users, and thus, improve reliability in the network. Such a configuration, however, requires a load balancing mechanism to divide the aggregate bandwidth and load among the servers in the site. Additional load balancing units are then used to add redundancy and to improve reliability of a site.
While load balancing mechanisms are heavily utilized to accommodate the explosive growth of network usage, the prior art load balancing technology has several limitations. One such limitation is the requirement of additional hardware. Load balancing techniques, as they exist in the prior art typically cannot operate without adding additional hardware components to the network, which makes such procedures a costly endeavor. Additionally, the existing equipment used for load balancing cannot be used in sites operating tunneling communication, which enables one network to send its data via connections on another network. One tunnel may carry many TCP sessions, which may originate from different sources to several destinations. Current load balancing equipment replaces the source IP address or the destination IP address with the IP address of the load balancing equipment. This creates a problem in sites operating tunneling communication because several clients with different IP addresses are using the same tunnel. Thus, a packet in the tunnel segment may have the destination address of the slave and not the final destination address. Therefore the receiver of the message, in the internet side, misses the original identity of the client and it can not give customize services, additionally in some cases the source IP is used for security mechanism so its important to keep the original source IP.
Moreover common load balancing mechanisms cannot be used with a connection that has been initiate from the Internet side via the “server farm site” to a client.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a system and a method for a server that will be able to perform load balancing processes that can accommodate sites operating tunnel communication by maintaining the same packet address on the client side and on the network side (transparent operation) and perform load balancing in both directions.